If you use month, quarter, or half as an external date, an internal release date change should either update the external date or warn you.
Merged

When using external dates on reports, it sorts based on the precise date hiding behind the external date shown on the record MM/DD/YYYY. The internal date, doesn't change that external date if you display it in months, quarters or halves, and the releases you're most likely to change the dates on are the ones that are far enough out that you're likely to show them in vaguer expressions. It's easy forget to update both dates if you move a release date, and when we publish roadmaps we have PMs and BAs trying to troubleshoot why releases are showing up in strange order even though their internal dates are correct.

Ideally update both together, or at least provide a warning when they're out of sync.

Unfortunately it sounds like you guys used one field option to do what should have been two.

I would like to be able to lock my external date to my internal date while still rendering it as a quarter or half for certain releases.

The problem is that I have two possible paths today.

1. I can use internal dates and resolve the calendar in a single granularity.

2. I can display releases using vaguer release timelines the further out they are, but I have to do so by maintaining a second, unnecessarily independent external release date and rounding that to Q/H etc.

A few options to make this easier:

1. Let me lock them together while still rounding the external date to a month, quarter, or half.

2. Display the "under the hood" date driving the month, quarter, or half underneath the Q1 2019 so that I can easily see they're out of sync.